Stoke threaten council tax hikes and service cuts

Stoke threaten council tax hikes and service cuts

Wobbly Stoke-on-Trent City Council have warned that inflation-busting council tax hikes in hand with service cuts will be needed to prevent the local authority decending £17m into the red.

According to today’s The Sentinel, councillors were called to a special briefing where they were told that there’s already a predicted overspend of £7.5m by April, and senior managers added that a further £9.3m of unexpected costs had been identified.

Of course the word ‘recession’ is now coming in very handy as a get-out-of-jail-free card, but in truth, even before the recession hit, this council was one of the most disaster-prone and spendthrift in the region. You only have to look at this blog for proof:

"I don't accept that all these different overspends are just down to the recession."Sixteen million pounds is a huge discrepancy considering we only implemented the current budget three months ago."

Stoke council currently spend £133m hiring 5,500 non-teaching staff and are planning to save as much as £1.3m cutting back on consultants and agency staff, but worryingly they may be hitting Stoke residents with a whopping maximum 4.9% council tax rise in order to harvest another £1.2m.

That’s right, the very people who are suffering most with the recession will be hit for extra money when the TPA have shown time and time again that there are sensible ways to cut costs without resorting to these tax hiking measures.

As an exercise, last year the TPA calculated how much a local authority could save by slicing just 10% from payroll, publicity and pensions spending, and in Stoke’s case the potential saving was a decent £3,152,700. That’s more than double what they’d save from raising council tax and would no doubt contribute to the efficiency of the council itself. And just from looking at the blogs above, anyone could see that there’s an awful lot of waste and fat to trim to compliment this sort of spending cut.

The people of Stoke have already suffered enormously from the horrendous errors of their council, and now it seems fundamentally unfair that they should once again be expected to pick up the tab for bills run-up by extravagant and cavalier politicians and council executives. The powers that be have an absolute responsibility to take a forensic look at the way this run, to eliminate inefficiencies, and to make up this shortfall without further punishing their most unfortunate public.

Wobbly Stoke-on-Trent City Council have warned that inflation-busting council tax hikes in hand with service cuts will be needed to prevent the local authority decending £17m into the red.

According to today’s The Sentinel, councillors were called to a special briefing where they were told that there’s already a predicted overspend of £7.5m by April, and senior managers added that a further £9.3m of unexpected costs had been identified.

Of course the word ‘recession’ is now coming in very handy as a get-out-of-jail-free card, but in truth, even before the recession hit, this council was one of the most disaster-prone and spendthrift in the region. You only have to look at this blog for proof:

"I don't accept that all these different overspends are just down to the recession."Sixteen million pounds is a huge discrepancy considering we only implemented the current budget three months ago."

Stoke council currently spend £133m hiring 5,500 non-teaching staff and are planning to save as much as £1.3m cutting back on consultants and agency staff, but worryingly they may be hitting Stoke residents with a whopping maximum 4.9% council tax rise in order to harvest another £1.2m.

That’s right, the very people who are suffering most with the recession will be hit for extra money when the TPA have shown time and time again that there are sensible ways to cut costs without resorting to these tax hiking measures.

As an exercise, last year the TPA calculated how much a local authority could save by slicing just 10% from payroll, publicity and pensions spending, and in Stoke’s case the potential saving was a decent £3,152,700. That’s more than double what they’d save from raising council tax and would no doubt contribute to the efficiency of the council itself. And just from looking at the blogs above, anyone could see that there’s an awful lot of waste and fat to trim to compliment this sort of spending cut.

The people of Stoke have already suffered enormously from the horrendous errors of their council, and now it seems fundamentally unfair that they should once again be expected to pick up the tab for bills run-up by extravagant and cavalier politicians and council executives. The powers that be have an absolute responsibility to take a forensic look at the way this run, to eliminate inefficiencies, and to make up this shortfall without further punishing their most unfortunate public.

Welcome to the TPA

Welcome to The TaxPayers' Alliance, Britain's grassroots campaigning group dedicated to reforming taxes, cutting spending and protecting taxpayers. If you like what we do, become a supporter now by signing up to our mailing list using the form below. John O'Connell, Chief Executive